May 14, 2010

Short Vowel Long Vowel

Short Vowels and Long vowels, I have read, are kinda tricky for the young reader. Seems the sounds are subltle and thus difficult to distinguish. Spending time really getting this early on can give readers a very good foundation for the future. So for step three in our Blend phonics book I am creating games to review the short vowels and the long vowels. Step three looks at the short vowel becoming long due to the addition of the silent "e". I used the free decoding cards from step three and some from step one and printed two copies of each onto card stock. I chose words like "man" and "Mane", 'fat' and "fate" so that the change of adding the silent "e" would be very well rehersed.

We are sticking with only words with the vowel "a" at first until the boys are comfortable switching from short to long due to silent "e". Then later I will add the other vowels and then mix them up a bit. The game we play with these cards is Go Fish.